08 - Far Cry 5

In the three weeks since Far Cry 5 released, I've seen a lot of feelings on it. People are down on it because it doesn't say much about the current political landscape, but rather plays in its periphery. They laud the game but dismiss the 'stance' it takes, saying the previous ones were bolder in their conviction. Honestly, I'm surprised I haven't seen a hot take saying something like "the reason you don't like this game as much as older Far Cry games is because you're shooting white people, and what that says about you" because this game has been hot take city and I don't know if you've heard or not, but people have some fucking feelings about it.

I think that's super goddamn weird. The series has historically always kept one foot firmly in the insane and another in the strictly-plausible (but never likely), and usually the worst part about the series is how it rectifies those two - one rarely serving as a palette cleanser for the other, but instead being an abrupt dismissal of momentum as you segue between them.

This game is less of that, and I'm really fucking glad. The absurd and the acceptable blend together here exceptionally well, way better than past games. Maybe it's just that I've been playing Far Cry fairly regularly since 2012 and I just speak the language better, but with this latest entry, I definitely felt a better balance of tone. The critiques I've seen about the story itself it are what I mentioned at the top - that it doesn't go far enough to address Trump's America. But that's pretty unfounded to me because that's just not what the game's about.

Getting mad at a game for not talking about Trump while discussing religious zealotry or fascism is like getting mad at a landscape painting of the beach for not showing enough meadow. Like yeah, there could've been more meadow, an astute point, but maybe this wasn't about the goddamn meadow.

It's not about religion. It's not about fascism. It's about the sane and the insane. it's about fate and coincidence. It's about blowing shit up and being overwhelmed by the landscape. It's about bullies and victims. It's about a lot - but it's not about contemporary politics. 

30-something hours in I've heard exactly two lines that can be read as political: one of the batshit, completely disillusioned characters called another an "Obama loving libtard" and one of the game's main bosses said "Have you seen the headlines? They're a joke, have you seen who's in charge?" One line by an insane character does not a political game make, and one throwaway vague line that could just as easily apply to Hilary as it does to Trump does not a political game make either. Turns out the dude that said that was a cult-obsessed anti-federalist who liked branding sins into peoples bodies with hot pokers... so, yeah, I'm guessing when you go to him about opinions on a president, you're going to get what you pay for. Someone related to that character talked about how everything recently has brought us (as a country) to the edge and we're just waiting for someone to push us off it. 

This game's story is an exercise in vague allusions and loose aphorisms meant to be some semblance of reality, but hardly anything that could constitute something literally real.

The game doesn't lean into politics as much as use statements like this to sound like something plausible, like something the most insane person in your life would say, it's world building, not statement making. Honestly? If it weren't for the "Libtard" line, this game could've been set in the late 70's or early 80's, and it probably should've. 

But there's a lot of criticism on the game, and I may be failing to understand the greater point that people are levying against it. That's my interpretation of the problems reviewers had, and I could well be missing something, so please reach out if you think I'm missing something.

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That's not my critique of the game. My critique of the game is that for every step forward it took for diegetic world building, it took two steps back in terms of being a video game; being more real made it less fun.

But barely less fun. Because Far Cry is... well, it's always a treat to play, in spite of its bullshit ending that made me want to pull my hair out, but I don't think it's very fair to compare the game's last 5 minutes against the first 35 or so hours I've spent with it. The ending is when the game gets its most interesting, but before you know it; credits roll. I'm not going to talk about the ending here because I don't want to spoil shit, but look for a post in the future about it, because hot-damn, even I don't know how I feel about it yet. 

The story, for the most part, is fucking rad. You're a rookie deputy called in by a US Marshal to serve an arrest warrant to a religious group leader named Joseph Seed, The Father. The closer you get to where he's set up shop in Hope County, Montana, the more clear it becomes: this isn't a religious leader at all, this is the head of a fucking doomsday cult. And this isn't him spreading influence throughout Hope County, this is him staging a religious insurrection on continental US territory. This dude's a goddamn maniac, and needs to be taken in. Or down.

Except it doesn't go smoothly because of course it doesn't. Once you're thrown into the world, it's up to you to give the local resistance shit worth getting excited about. You start taking back territory from The Father and his lieutenants - his brothers Jacob and John, and his sister Faith. They each have a little slice of paradise carved out for themselves and every mission you partake in gets you resistance points for their respective regions, and the more of those you have, the better position you're in to finally take them out.

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"But George - you said the game is too real to be fun, do you really think religious law could take over part of the coun-" No - it's not the story that makes the game too real. The context of the story is fucking awesome - it's basically retelling the Branch Dividians failed stand against the FBI at Waco, TX and it blows it up to the nth degree. Joseph Seed is a fascinating main villain, as little you interact with him throughout the main story - and his fanatical siblings are fucking terrifying. Special shoutout to Faith - she might be the best amalgam of Batman's Poison Ivy and a psychopath I've ever seen. Her fiefdom deals with a drug used to suppress people and essentially make them zombies. Since you've been exposed to it, she starts popping up randomly while you're out and about - kinda like the way Elvis does in True Romance and it's unsettling, it's gorgeous, it's insane - it's awesome.

These are complex villains you want to understand but never want to sympathize with. They make that impossible because they're all so clearly out of their fucking minds. Just because Far Cry 5 doesn't twist the knife on the current socio-political climate of the United States, that doesn't make this a ratification of these crazy ideals, it's an indictment of them through and through. And you can tell they're complex villains because they don't simply inflict physical wounds - they scar you just as much psychologically as they ever do your body. They creep you out with their words, not threats, but by their passion, and their confidence in their beliefs.

They're at their most terrifying when they try to convince you they're right. 

Taking a cue from previous games, the Guns for Hire mechanic has been expanded to include generic fighters, specialists like pilots and snipers, and animals. Like Boomer the dog. Not only can he do a little recon and see every enemy in a given area, but he can also be given commands to take enemies down and brings ammo when you're running. There's also a cougar named Peaches and a diabetic bear named Cheeseburger that can do the same - a really smart blend of Far Cry 4 and Primal's companion system that gives you a thorough mastery of the game's impressively large and Darwinian world. 

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Because of the large game world, there's one odd recurring quirk the game does to push the narrative forward. The more hell you raise in each of the regions, the more of a nuisance you become to its Seed-sibling commander. They address this by kidnapping you - they pull you in for what's essentially a little chat - a little sharing of their philosophy and how they feel you fit into it, before making you do a little gameplay that's more or less unique to each boss, though thematically similar across them all.

It's weird narratively, because since I first started becoming such a thorn in their side they've captured me probably about 8 times and never tried to put a bullet in my head. I get the difficulty because changing the world and advancing the narrative in a game that's completely driven by player agency is difficult as hell - but it's frustrating when they do cut me down at the knees and pull me in because they couldn't think of a better way to move the plot along. They remove all player agency because they forgot to tell you something important. 

A small gripe with the story, but nothing worth really getting upset about - those sequences are awesome and usually gorgeous and inventively executed. But, like... I just wanted to clear out an outpost and go to bed. I didn't want to get kidnapped the second I got into the region and then have to advance the plot. For a game designed to let the player do whatever they want, they take away control with regularity, which is different than previous games. 

If I'm scratching my head at one part of the game, it most certainly is not the story (besides that fucking ending) - it's the way the world builds. In previous Far Cry games, they were basically checklists. The map would be fogged until you got to the highest point - that would reveal territory and things to do there. Then there would be an outpost to take out - a mini base full of bad guys that you had to clear. The more outposts you cleared out in any area, the fewer enemies would appear - making it easier for you to accomplish smaller tasks, build your character up, and move on to the next area.

Far Cry 5 does away with a lot of that. Some missions require you to hunt animals - which is totally a Far Cry thing, through and through. However, you'll have no fucking clue where to find the animal you need unless you've:

A) heard about it from a character you've spoken to

B) Saw a road sign warning you about said animal being in the area

C) You read a hunting magazine that talks about a specific animal in a specific area

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That's insane and awesome - that the world is literally built from the ground up to be explored and it's so realistic that only if you consumed relevant knowledge in the game will you have said information in the game. It's awesome... in theory. But not in execution.

Because stuff isn't marked on your map, because of the dismissal of the checklist system that Far Cry perfected - the game has never been more 'realistic', but never more involved to play. I legit felt like John Rambo trekking through a world that hates him, trying to make sense of this new strange place, but dammit I just wanted to play a video game, y'know?

I couldn't advance quickly in the game because instead of taking vehicles, I had to huff it on foot and look for shit I needed to advance the narrative of the game itself. And I had to advance on foot, because in the early game you get fucked up on the roads because you haven't destroyed enough of their foothold in each respective region. It forces you to explore the game, and as cool as that is, it takes time.

The game wanted me to respect its time more than it respected mine. Which is pretty incredible, right? How far we've come.

It's impressive how immersive, natural, and diegetic the world building is in this game. It's a huge achievement in interactive storytelling and I'm sure-beyond-sure that it's the future of open world games. It's just not my cup of tea, man. I want to jump into a game, complete clear, concise objectives, and get out. I'm accomplishing way less in-game for way more effort and it's great for the medium. It's just not great for me. It's not how I want to play games. I did less in an hour than any Far Cry game before this because I had to earn it. That's awesome, but overwhelming when you only have an hour to play.

I totally get that I could be in the only person in the universe who feels that way. But dammit - this is my blog and you asked how I felt.

Maybe you asked. I'm still not sure anyone reads this. Anyway, here's a gif of you killing someone and then Boomer bringing you a gun. 

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One other side complaint? The fucking airplanes. Once you've advanced the resistance efforts in each region, they get tired of playing with kid gloves, so they sic some old P-51 Mustang style planes on your ass. Sometimes you'll just get fucked up and there's not a lot you can do about it. You'll just be there, hunting deer, a plane will see you (and you're almost never sure how), and literally drop a bomb in the exact nine square feet you're in just to get to you.

It's annoying, but it's also inspiring. It's making me play more... authentic, I guess? I'm sticking to tree cover more, I'm staying out of open areas, and it's changing the allies I have on hand - now I pretty much always have air support on command, but I'm still waiting for the day I can pull out my .50 cal rifle and snipe that piece of shit right out of the sky. This game is making me play like a maniac and it's pretty awesome, even when I - occasionally - want to snap my controller in half.

Should you get Far Cry 5? Hell yeah you should. The game is great, it's just less of the video game I wanted it to be, and way more of the tour of Montana I don't always have time to throw myself into. That said - the more I play, the more I familiarize myself with the game, the easier the world becomes to manipulate and make more game-y.

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I'm definitely Neo seeing lines of code instead of people at this point as I wrap up some last things since finishing the story, but man alive. It took me a fuck lot longer than I thought it would to get here. It feels like all the systems they've introduced in previous games (enemy patrols, companions, flying vehicles, hostage missions, treasure stashes etc.) have finally coalesced and they've done so perfectly. It finally makes sense why you're doing all this shit instead of just doing it because you can. or to stretch the play-time like it did in previous games.

This is a huge step forward for the series because all of the side stuff that felt like it was there just for the sake of it finally means something, and contextually within the world makes perfect sense. It's a huge win systematically, and beyond impressive.

But all that has kind of taken a toll on me, gaming wise.

I almost feel like I've spent weeks/months mounting a guerrilla-rebel counterattack against a despotic cult leader, but, I'm not sure if I ever wanted to feel that way. That's a huge accomplishment, but not why I ever played the game series before - I never wanted to role-play as Jason Brody in Far Cry 3 or as that Caveman-dude in Primal... But taking out outposts undetected is still a rush. Unlocking companions and using them to pull off crazy Michael Bay-esque moments is hilarious. Getting a headshot with a compound bow from 200 meters away still makes you feel like a fucking god, and figuring out just what you're supposed to do to unlock a treasure location makes you feel like a genius.

The game does so much right. You just have to invest more time in it than previous games before you can get to what it does best- not that that's a bad thing. It's just a bad thing for me right now. With so much to do in the game, it's easy to feel like you're drowning instead of swimming for just a little too long but you'll get there. 

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But that ending is wild. Maybe even a little too wild for me.